Who needs to wait until the end of the month to start celebrating Halloween? Certainly not Massively OP’s MJ! (She might actually start in January, but that’s beside the point.) SMITE is getting in the holiday spirit with today’s Departure to the Afterlife update. There are plenty of new Odyssey skins along with the Halloween themed Arena map. Halloween chests in game offer spooky music, skins, and other goodies, and MJ has some treats to give away as well:

Trick or Treat Cupid

Grim Reaper Thanatos

Harbinger Nike

Dark Summoner Nu Wa

Shogun Hachiman

Wild Druid Artio

Join us live at 9:00 p.m. and you can win some new costumes for your favorite gods!

Halloween is taking over SMITE this month — and every other MMO and MOBA, of course, but that’s OK because it’s the best holiday of the year and you know I’m right.

This week’s update introduces new skins for multiple characters, including Halloween skins for Thanatos (shown above), Cupid, Izanami, and Susano, several of which are part of the latest leg of the game’s ongoing Odyssey 2018 overhaul. Players should further expect new Japanese-themed quests and the return of the Halloween Arena, plus some balancing tweaks for Ao Kuang, Awilix, Cu Chulainn, Erlang Shen, Izanami, and Raijin. Check out the video for a detailed look at what to expect from this chapter of Odyssey!

It’s patch day in SMITE, as I remembered this morning when my husband logged in and saw the new “Belly Ache Ymir” skin. Our header above isn’t even big enough to show you the best part: the chocolate chip cookie codpiece. This game.

Anyhoo, Ymir is just one of the Norse gods getting love in today’s patch 4.18, Odyssey: Journey to Asgard, which also introduces new Norse quests and the Norse Conqueror achievement. As part of its ongoing “Project Olympus” overhaul, Hi-Rez is adding random player loadouts, turning off server rollup, and fixing other annoying parts of spectator mode. Check out the patch notes below, and then… hey, who wants an ice cream cone?

Wednesday the 13th could be your lucky day. Do you want a SMITE Ultimate God Pack? We bet you do! And we bet you’d be fine just watching Massively OP’s MJ hang out on the gods screen and talk for an hour for a chance to win one. After all, this pack gives you all the gods as well as 1500 gems. (On top of that, it refunds any favor you spent on gods previously.) Of course, MJ won’t really do that to you — she will actually dive into the Corrupted Arena again, so there will be plenty of SMITE action and plenty of death counter feeding. Join us live at 9:00 p.m. for your chance to win the Ultimate God Pack she brought home from PAX West just for you.

Lore! Huh! What is it good for? Understanding why you’re standing in the middle of a pack of angry people with fangs in MMOs, of course. It’s the thin line dividing your actions from being reckless, indiscriminate mayhem and discriminating, careful mayhem. Lore is how you know what the world is like beyond your front door, and it’s the difference between understanding that you face Ragnaros, lord of flame or just knowing that there’s a dude here made out of fire, so you should probably use water spells on him.

All lore, however, is not created equal. There’s lore that creates a detailed, vibrant world full of people with their own hopes and dreams, and there’s lore that creates a game where you know what you’re supposed to be doing but have no idea what people do for fun afterwards aside from waiting to die. So today, we explore the tiers of lore, arranged in a numbered list because that’s the entire premise of the column. It’s not Perfect Vague Assortment of Concepts. That’s not even a column.

In the meantime, however, we’ve got some free stuff for you courtesy of Hi-Rez: keys for the Norse starter pack:

“The Norse Starter Pack will grant the 3 Norse cards Dagaz, Gift of Munin, and Ratatoskr. These codes can be redeemed in-game and are for PC only. These codes can be redeemed only once per account, so if someone has already redeemed a code previously, they can’t redeem it again on the same account. (Note: This pantheon starter packs is different from the main starter pack in the Steam release that grants the Ra skin.)”

Click the Mo button below (and prove you’re not a robot) to grab one of these keys!

SMITE and Paladins studio Hi-Rez is thanking players today for their efforts in raising funds for the victims of the 2017 hurricane season.

“​Earlier this month SMITE and Paladins players around the world contributed to the efforts to support those that have been affected by the devastation left in wake of Hurricane Harvey. Hi-Rez Studios hosted special promotions for its online games SMITE and Paladins where players could purchase in-game cosmetic items with a portion of the proceeds going to hurricane relief. Together the online communities for these two games raised $76,000 which Hi-Rez has donated to the Red Cross for hurricane relief efforts.”

The money raised is a sliver of the $1,401,749 Hi-Rez and its players have earmarked for charity since 2012. “The Atlanta based studio is grateful to its players for contributing to
charitable efforts that help others in need,” the PR says.

Just because SMITE and Paladins weren’t available to play at PAX West doesn’t mean that there wasn’t stuff to learn about the games from Hi-Rez!

I got the low down on Hi-Rez projects from Scott Zier, who is VP of Design at Hi-Rez as well as executive producer of Hand of the Gods. We touched on multiple topics, from the flagship MOBA and the shooter to the MIA mobile title and the new mobile title. As Zier said, the studio always has a number of projects going at any one time: “We’re very much a multi-game studio.”

While the full Hi-Rez portfolio wasn’t in attendance at PAX West, Hand of the Gods was on-hand with a fan tournament as well as machines to introduce folks to the game. Devs were also available to discuss this tactical SMITE spinoff. I sat down with Lead designer Scott Lussier and Executive Producer and VP of Design Scott Zier to talk about the game’s name, its progress, the reception at the convention, and plans going forward.

In fact, one of the tidbits Lussier shared is that the Japanese pantheon is next on the list after Hindu is released later this month.

One of the reasons I gravitated to and stick by the MMORPG genre in spite of its many ups and downs (oh, so many downs) over the last two decades is the fact that I can play more or less exactly the character I want to play, which is usually female characters. Other genres, even RPGs, have been relatively slow to catch up to what we’ve had here in MMO land right from the start. The idea of a serious MMORPG launching without female toons of some sort is almost unheard of.

I bring this up because of Quantic Foundry’s latest blog post, which delves its Gamer Motivation Profile for data on how gamers feel about being able to play female protagonists. Unsurprisingly, three-quarters of female gamers and a third of male gamers, irrespective of age, consider that option very or extremely important!

For this week’s Massively Overthinking, I asked our mixed-gender staff three questions: what they think about Quantic’s findings, whether they stick to the gender they personally identify as when rolling toons in MMOs, and whether the lack of gender options — or in MMOs’ case, things like gender-locked classes — drive them as nuts as they drive me.

The next SMITE adventure is finally here, and Massively OP’s MJ is excited to jump into it. The arena is her favorite part of the MOBA, and this adventure is the Corrupted Arena. She’s not exactly sure what she will face, but the announcement picture looks dangerous enough so she’s gathered some fodder… er friends… and is diving in. Join us live at 9:00 p.m. and experience the new adventure with MJ. (There might even be a few codes to give away!)

At its pre-Gamescom press conference this Sunday, Microsoft revealed more about its upcoming Xbox One X and its glorious 4K gaming capabilities. As part of the conference, the company listed several games that would benefit from the enhanced performance and power of the console when it arrives this November.

The Xbox One X boasts six teraflops of processing power, 4K Ultra Blu-Ray, and 12GB GDDR5 graphics memory, and will retail for $500. Interested players can pre-order the Project Scropio edition right now for as long as supplies last.

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!